The Growth Strategies and Community Building of TikTok: Insights from Musically's Early Days

The Growth Strategies and Community Building of TikTok: Insights from Musically's Early Days

Introduction:
In this article, we will explore the growth strategies and community building efforts of TikTok, with insights drawn from its predecessor, Musically. By examining how Musically leveraged the creativity and preferences of teenagers, as well as the importance of user involvement in the design process, we can gain a deeper understanding of TikTok's success and its potential implications for other social media platforms.

Understanding the Power of Entertainment:
When it comes to creating successful startups, it is often easier to tap into the entertainment aspect rather than education. This is because entertainment aligns with human nature, whereas education often goes against it. YouTube, for example, might not have achieved such massive success if it had started as an educational platform. By recognizing this, Musically (now TikTok) focused on providing an entertaining platform that resonated with the creative and abundant free time of teenagers.

Targeting Teenagers as Early Adopters:
To make a new social media platform successful, it is crucial to engage teenagers, especially as early adopters. American teenagers, in particular, are highly creative and spend significant amounts of their time on social media platforms. TikTok understood this and tapped into their desire to share their daily lives through a platform that allowed for creative expression. In contrast, Chinese students, who primarily focus on academics, do not have the same need for a life-sharing platform.

Incorporating Participatory Design:
To create a successful social media platform, it is essential to be intimately connected with the users. TikTok embraced the concept of Participatory Design, involving end users in the design process from the beginning. By connecting with hundreds of Musically users through WeChat, TikTok was able to receive daily feedback and build a sense of community. Additionally, seeking user feedback before writing code for critical designs helped ensure that the platform catered to user needs effectively.

Starting with Utility, Building Community, and then Focusing on Social Aspects:
When developing a new app, it is crucial to prioritize utility before focusing on community-building and social features. Musically achieved this by providing the utility of adding music to videos. Once a sufficient user base was established, the platform began building a community around this utility. This approach, often referred to as "Come for the tool, stay for the network," allows for gradual growth and user retention.

Transitioning from Image Editing to Social Networking:
Instead of directly creating a social networking service, it may be more effective to gather users through image editing or collection services and then transform them into a social network. By doing so, platforms can increase their chances of success by catering to existing user preferences while gradually expanding into social aspects.

The Importance of Core Functionality and Value Proposition:
One crucial lesson learned is that adding features does not necessarily help struggling products succeed. Instead, a successful product should have a single core functionality that serves as its killer feature. To alter the growth curve, it is essential to change the value proposition.

Curating Content for User Feeds:
After users registered on Musically, the platform ensured that the best content was displayed in their feeds. Curating user-selected videos for the feed was a seemingly simple yet crucial element. This approach allowed for a more personalized experience and increased user engagement.

Finding Strong Entry Points:
While having an ideal vision of the destination is essential, finding strong entry points is equally vital. When building a community, one must learn from economic policies. Just as individuals migrated to America with the belief that they too could become wealthy, communities are built from scratch by attracting people to a new platform. However, it is equally important to ensure decentralization and avoid concentrating privileges solely among early adopters.

Creating Opportunities for New Entrants:
TikTok's recommendation algorithm introduced a unique feature that allowed new and lesser-known videos to be discovered, even among popular content. This system created opportunities for new entrants to gain visibility and audience engagement. This approach was only made possible due to TikTok's focus on short videos and the specific nature of its platform.

Leveraging Influencers and Artists:
While top artists contribute to a platform's growth, it is not necessary to invest excessive time and effort in bringing them onboard. Instead, focusing on meeting the daily needs of the majority of users allows the platform to scale organically. As long as the platform attracts a diverse range of artists over time, prosperity can be achieved.

The Power of Lip Syncing:
The versatility of lip syncing, which allows for comedy, dance, and various forms of expression, played a significant role in Musically's success. By lowering the barriers to content creation, Musically attracted initial popularity. It is crucial to recognize that if the platform had focused solely on karaoke, it may not have achieved the same level of success.

From 0 to 1: The Importance of Specificity and Expansion:
When a product is in its initial stages, it must be highly specific and effectively address a particular need. Once it reaches a stage of growth from 1 to x, it must become more versatile and serve as a canvas for various uses.

The Value of Social Graphs:
For social media platforms, the most valuable asset lies not in the content itself, but in the social graphs created by users. These connections form the foundation for community building and engagement.

Conclusion:
To summarize, TikTok's success can be attributed to its understanding of user preferences, involvement in the design process, and ability to create engaging and entertaining features. By targeting teenagers as early adopters, embracing Participatory Design, and prioritizing utility before community and social aspects, TikTok was able to create a thriving platform. Moving forward, other social media platforms can learn from these strategies and apply them to their own growth and community-building efforts.

Actionable Advice:

1. Identify and cater to the entertainment preferences of your target audience. Understand how your product or platform can align with their natural inclinations, making it more appealing and engaging.
2. Involve users in the design process from the beginning. Seek their feedback and incorporate their suggestions to create a sense of ownership and community.
3. Prioritize utility before building a community and focus on a core functionality that serves as a killer feature. Continuously adapt and refine your value proposition to meet the changing needs and desires of your users.

By implementing these actionable strategies, platforms can enhance their growth potential and foster vibrant communities.